I Never Wanted Anything From You
by accioamber
Summary: Harry, Lily Luna. Harry struggles with being a parent. Written for emofest over at Livejournal. About 2,700 words. Angst galore! :  Toying with the idea of writing a sequel, if it would go over well.


It all started when Ginny planned the ridiculous trip to Romania for the Christmas holidays. Harry didn't want to go. He had had a rough few months at the Ministry and he didn't fancy spending a week of his limited vacation time in Romania visiting Ginny's brother. He was an alright guy, Charlie, it was just that they had been to visit him several times before and it all had a very 'been there, done that' feel to it.

"You really don't want to go?" Ginny asked him as he was getting ready for work one morning a week before Christmas.

"Gin...no, I really don't. I'm sorry. If you've got your heart set on me going, then I will, but I'm exhausted and I just want to relax at home."

"It's not that I don't understand, but it's Christmas...the whole family's going, Mum, Dad, Ron, Hermione, Hugo and Rose, Bill, Fleur, Victoire, Teddy, George, Angelina...everyone. We should be together." Ginny handed him his robes.

Harry sighed. He didn't relish fighting with Ginny, or looking like a jerk to his entire family, but if everyone wanted to see Charlie so badly, why didn't he come here? 20 people pack up and go, or just one? It made no sense to him, but he knew better than to say so. He sighed and pulled on his robes as he got ready to go. "Fine. I'll go."

Ginny smiled and kissed him. "Thank you. I promise it will be fun and you won't lift a finger for anything."

Harry smiled at her and then left the house, Apparating to the Ministry and thinking of just how unlikely it was that he wouldn't have to do anything.

He returned later that night exhausted and well after dinner time to an annoyed Ginny, who was reading a letter that had been just dropped off by a Hogwarts school owl moments before his arrival. "Can't believe her," Ginny muttered, throwing the letter on the kitchen table. "Oh, and thanks for letting me know you'd be late-again. Your dinner's on the counter." She said as she shot him a glare.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said, giving her a quick hug and kiss, even though Ginny was the type of person who didn't like being touched when she was angry. When she shoved him away, he help up his hands in mock surrender and grabbed his plate from the counter, pointed his wand at it and muttered a warming spell. He sat down at the kitchen table to eat, waited a few minutes for her to calm down, and then said, "So what's wrong with you?"

Ginny, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, ran her hands through her hair and sighed. "It's Lily. I swear, she was such a sweet little girl but now...well, she doesn't want to go to Romania, either. She won't say why, but she's just refusing to go and I don't really have the energy to fight with her. She'll just have to stay at Hogwarts unless..." Ginny looked over at Harry. "If you really don't want to go, you could stay home with her. It'll be easier explaining that you two need to get in some bonding time than to just say that my husband and daughter don't want to spend time with the family on Christmas."

"Oh, come on, that's not fair. Ask Ron, the Ministry's been crazy and I don't feel like traveling-"

Ginny cut him off. "Do you want to stay home with Lily or not?"

Harry paused for a moment. "Yeah. That's fine, of course."

"Okay, I'll write her back," Ginny said and Harry nodded.

Harry had never been as close with Lily as he had with James and Albus. It was just so much..._easier _to connect with them than it was with her. The boys weren't complicated- a bit trying on his patience sometimes, especially James, but they were easy to decode. James mostly wanted to push buttons, and he was very good at it. Albus was quiet, and only made a fuss when he was being picked on or upset about something, something tangible. The point was that his sons had problems that were easy to fix-a tap of his wand could fix a broken toy, or putting James in his room would stop him from picking on Albus (for the moment, at least). His daughter however...well, he had never learned to connect with her, had just pushed her, any and all of her issues onto Ginny, and hoped like hell that it would never come back to bite him.

Part of the problem was that he just didn't understand girls. It was a miracle, really, that he'd ever snagged Ginny, because he had always been completely terrible at talking to females. His experience, for lack of a better word, with Cho Chang still stuck like a thorn in his mind, reminding him that even though he could fight a war and finish off the Darkest wizard of all time, he couldn't handle going out on a date. His comfort with Ginny now had been born out of years and years of practice, of getting to know each other and feel each other out slowly and carefully, along with knowing her since he was 11.

But still, Lily was his daughter. When Ginny had found out that she was pregnant with a girl their third time around (_'Finally!'_ she had proclaimed; after two boys she was ready for a little female companionship at home), Harry had assumed that everything would fall in line as it had with his boys. Somehow, though, it never had. As a baby she screamed almost every time Harry held her, spit up on only his shirt, and he was certain he wasn't imagining that she was glaring at him by the time she was three months old. When Lily was a toddler, she would only walk to Ginny and her first word was 'Mama'-shortly followed by (what felt like) every other word in the English language, including James and Albus, before she deigned to say 'Dada.'

It certainly didn't get any easier as she got older. Whenever she wanted anything, Ginny got it for her; if she came flying into the house in tears because the boy down the street shoved her, Harry ended up passing the problem along to Ginny; her tears of jealousy over both of her brothers going to Hogwarts before her were wiped away by her mother. After the boys went off to school, he figured he and Lily would spend some quality time together and maybe they would finally develop a relationship. Whenever they were alone together, he really did try. He'd sit across from her and attempt to play tea party, or with her dolls, but he inevitably would do the wrong thing and she'd just get frustrated with him. "_No_, Daddy, not like that...I told you, the other way..._stop_, you're going to break her!" And eventually... "Daddy, don't you have to go to work?"

His own daughter would rather have him go to work than play with her. He was embarrassed to admit that at that point, he stopped trying. At that point, he figured that if Lily wanted him or needed him, she would come to him. In the event that she actually did, he would have no idea how to respond to her...but regardless. And after she went off to Hogwarts when she was eleven, Harry had absolutely no chance of trying to get through to her. She only came home on school holidays and each time she was more and more stand-offish with Harry. She had friends that she didn't talk to him about, she took subjects she didn't talk to him about and he was sure that she did...i_things/i_ that she didn't talk to him about. Lily was in her fifth year now and they hadn't exchanged much more than small talk in years. The thought of a week alone with her was a little daunting, but they'd be okay.

Ginny scrawled off a short note to Lily, telling her that she would be spending holidays with her father while the rest of the family took their trip, and sent it off.

- - - - - - - - -break

Harry's last day of work collided with the day that Lily was coming home on the train, so he managed to get out of work on time, for once, and head down to King's Cross to collect her that evening. She got off the train and offered him a small smile before heading over to him.

"Hey, Dad." She looked different, somehow. Something had changed but Harry couldn't quite put his finger on what. He went to give her a quick hug, but he knew from her body language that it wasn't welcome, so he just rocked back and forth on his heels a little.

"You look...nice." he said. Merlin, this was awkward. This was even more awkward than he'd thought it would be. "Should we go? I just thought, since it's only you and I that we'd Apparate...if that's okay with you."

"That's fine," Lily said, shoving her hair behind her ears and holding his arm loosely. Harry concentrated, closed his eyes, and after a few painful seconds, they'd arrived back at their house. They walked inside and Lily immediately kicked off her shoes and headed for the staircase.

"I'm just gonna go change and stuff. I'll be down later. Thanks for, you know, coming to get me. Or whatever," Lily said, and Harry nodded, watching as she raced up the stairs in her stockinged feet, followed by the distant sound of a door closing.

He sank onto the couch and put his head in his hands. What on earth had he been thinking? How was he going to spend an entire week with Lily when they couldn't even make small talk? It had been hard enough when she was younger, but at least then she had been unafraid of yelling at him and speaking her mind. He didn't know anything about that girl upstairs; she had friends who knew her better than her own father.

His stomach let out a growl, and he went over to the fridge. He was hopeless at cooking, but Ginny had prepared several meals for them before she had left. He wrenched open the door and stared at them, deemed them a lost cause for the night and went upstairs with the proposition of dinner out. How they were going to suffer through a meal together, Harry had no clue, but all he could do was ask.

He knocked twice on Lily's door before opening it, not waiting for her to tell him it was okay to enter. "Hey, do you wanna head down to the Leaky for-" He stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth hanging open.

Lily had changed out of her school uniform. When Harry came in, she was standing with her shirt pulled up slightly, her hand resting gently on her stomach. He felt his heart drop; her belly was slightly rounded, but in a way that suggested she hadn't just gained some weight. It had swelled in a way that he hadn't seen in a long time, and never in his daughter. As soon as Lily realized what had happened, she immediately dropped her shirt and blushed to the tips of her red hair, greatly resembling Ginny.

"Don't you know how to knock?" She cried, crossing her arms tightly and turning her back to him.

"I did! Lily, what...what's going on? Are you-"

"No! Just go, okay? Just leave me alone."

He waited a moment. "No, I'm not leaving you alone." Harry walked over to her and grabbed her shoulder, gently turning her around so she was facing him. The image of what he had seen-and he _knew_ what he he had seen-was burned into his brain. He stared at Lily, at the tears that were now falling down her face. Their eyes met for the first time since he'd picked her up from the station, perhaps for the first time in a while. She had his eyes. Harry took a deep breath and said, "Are you pregnant?"

Those words broke the spell and Lily shoved herself away from him, pushing past him and going downstairs. Harry followed her, close at her heels.

"Don't walk away from me!" He said, grabbing her shoulder again and stopping her in the kitchen.

"Don't touch me!" She shot back.

"Fine. Answer me." Deep breath. "Are you pregnant?"

There was a long pause, and finally, after looking at the ceiling for the thousandth time and sighing yet again, she muttered, "Yes."

- - - break- - - -

Harry paced for a good hour, his hunger long forgotten as he tore his hair out. How could his fifteen-year-old daughter be pregnant? Lily was sitting on the couch in front of him, a strange expression of devastation and annoyance written all over her face.

"What are they doing at Hogwarts these days, running a free match-making service? Or just letting you kids do whatever the hell you want?" He stormed.

Lily said nothing.

"_How _can you be pregnant?" Harry said incredulously.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Well, I believe you're familiar with the process. Or at least you should be, having three kids."

"Don't pull that condescending crap with me, not now." He sank down onto the sofa next to her. "How can you be pregnant? Who did this to you?"

"No one _did _anything to me, Dad, okay? I'm not a little kid. For the record, it was-and don't you _dare_ overreact-Scorpius Malfoy."

"Scorpius Malfoy? Since when are you dating a Malfoy?" He yelled, not thinking at all that he was overreacting. The thought that a Malfoy had been the one to do...this to his daughter, to be the one who had taken her innocence away, enraged him. He was going to kill Malfoy, absolutely kill him. _Both _of them, for good measure, Scorpius and Draco. Just because he _could_.

"Who said I'm dating him? A little too much Firewhiskey and I'll do just about anything," Lily said, and then she clapped her hands over her mouth in shock.

"_Excuse me_? Since when do you drink?" Harry said angrily.

"Oh, please. There's so much you don't know about...not that it should come as a surprise. You don't know _anything_ about me." Lily had, by now, stopped crying, and was relishing the opportunity to finally lay it all out on the table with Harry.

Harry stared at her. "I...I know enough to know that you're too young to be drinking and doing other...things."

"Oh, please. Don't pull that crap on me. You can't tell me what I'm too young for." Lily said snottily.

"I'm your father, it's my job to tell you what you're too young for, and believe me, sweetie, you're too young for this." Harry said quietly, staring at her belly.

"Stop. I made one mistake, that doesn't mean we can start pretending that we have a wonderful relationship. We never have and we never will, and this little clump of cells isn't going to change that."

Harry took a deep breath and weighed his words carefully. His first instinct was to just get up and walk away; that would have been easiest. What Lily had said had hurt him, but it was also true. She'd never been a 'Daddy's girl' and he'd never had that special bond with her that he had, truthfully, really wanted to have. He didn't know how to say all of that to her, though.

So he sighed and he looked at her, and said the only thing that made any sense: "I tried."

"Well, I guess that wasn't good enough." Lily said, touching her belly and looking away.


End file.
